


A Very Large Petri Dish

by coraxes



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 16:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19254826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coraxes/pseuds/coraxes
Summary: God starts another universe and runs an experiment.





	A Very Large Petri Dish

**Author's Note:**

> this au has almost certainly been written before, but whatever, i'm throwing my hat in the ring. more gen than shippy, but it's all about the husbands & references their canon love.

This isn’t the only world. That’s probably not a big surprise to you; scientists have been theorizing about it for a while, after all. They just don’t have the right cause.

The most popular theory is that every choice made splits off into another universe. Intriguing, right? But the truth is much simpler. Sometimes I get bored with that first universe, so I make another one. Choose a new starting point for the human race, or create people that couldn’t properly be called human at all; there are thousands of universes floating around out there, my little experiments.

Here’s one that will interest you. It starts six thousand years ago, in a garden.

* * *

“What are you doing?” Eve asked, staring nonplussed at the small winged person underneath the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

She wasn’t afraid of him. He looked rather flimsy, even though all that white was unsettling. His eyes were pale but not slitted and unnatural like the serpent guarding the eastern gate. Still, Eve felt he wasn’t supposed to be there; I had forbidden them to eat of the tree, after all. I hadn’t told them anyone else was allowed.

He startled mid-bite and pointed to his mouth,  _ terribly-sorry-but-I’m-eating,  _ and chewed hurriedly. “Sorry, dear girl, I just couldn’t help myself. Tastes as good as it looks!” This punctuated by a smile. He had a fleck of apple stuck to his cheek. “You should try one, they really are delicious.”

Was this a test? Or—perhaps, like the thing at the eastern gate, this was one of my messengers ; perhaps I had changed my mind. Eve looked at the apple dangling nearest her on an outstretched branch. It didn’t look dangerous. She wasn’t sure what something dangerous would look like, but it couldn’t be that. And she was tired of figs.

The person’s wings twitched and the apple broke from the branch. Eve caught it; it wasn’t right that such a perfect fruit should spoil on the ground. “I suppose one bite couldn’t hurt,” she said slowly.

“Precisely. I wonder what these would taste like caramelized? Perhaps with some cinnamon…” the man trailed off, muttering to himself.

Eve ate. You know the rest.

* * *

“Isn’t that your sword?” asked the—Aziraphale, it was Aziraphale. I’ll stop being coy. You know what’s going on here.

Crowley shrugged. He had turned back from his snake form specifically to do so; it was hard to look suitably expressive as a snake. “Yeah, well. Look at her, she’s pregnant.”

Adam was currently using the flaming sword to fight off a giant sloth. (I didn’t  _ just  _ use this universe to mess with Aziraphale and Crowley, after all. I have many experiments to run, and it would have been a waste of resources to use an entire universe for only one.)

Crowley looked sidelong at Aziraphale, who shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. Snake eyes are unnerving no matter what wears them. “Probably shouldn’t say it, but I think they were getting along better before the whole…you know…”

“Expelling them from their home?” Aziraphale suggested, smile pointed and insincere.

Crowley waved his hand in a circle,  _ yeah yeah that whatever.  _ “Yeah…suppose that wasn’t very nice, was it, but then again it wasn’t my call. Old Michael comes down all righteous and brassy, you know, not much I can do.” He looked out across the desert again. Adam had killed the giant sloth and was butchering it with the flaming sword, creating the world’s first well-done steak and thus proving humans could indeed introduce evil on their own. “Would be funny, wouldn’t it, if you had done the right thing and I’d done the wrong one?”

Good old Crowley, always quicker on the uptake.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. After all, I’ve just introduced humanity to sin—every evil act they accomplish from now on stems from me.” Aziraphale looked pleased with himself at the thought. Crowley only chewed his lip, and after a moment Aziraphale startled. “Where are my manners? Hell does seem to wear away at them. I’m called Aziraphale.”

Crowley’s true name was something I’d come up with in my early Enochian phase. It was unpronounceable by human standards, and difficult even by angelic and demonic ones. “Crawly,” he said, and frowned, already growing tired of it.

Aziraphale nodded and then looked up at the sky as the first rainstorm began. Crowley offered a wing.

* * *

A few important notes:

  1. While their respective dress sense remains the same, Gabriel does bully Crowley into wearing a pale shirt and scarf every once in a while so he doesn’t look like so much of a demon. Aziraphale manages to wear a few colors that are not beige.
  2. Crowley is still the one to suggest the Arrangement. More than once over the following centuries I nearly end up with two demons on my hands; he never does know when to stop pushing. But I do allow some flexibility for my favorites.
  3. Aziraphale ends up just as low-ranking in hell as Crowley, but he’s less inclined to simply take credit for other peoples’ work. He’s very skilled in pointing people in the right—or rather wrong—direction.
  4. Crowley is more of a high-ranking angel than Aziraphale could ever hope to be. Heaven is better at recognizing talented project managers.
  5. Agnes Nutter knows something’s up with the universe. Maybe one day I’ll let her outlive Pulsifer, but her ending is just so much _fun._
  6. Crowley calls him “demon” instead of “angel” this time around, but it’s just as affectionate, and he always knows what he’s saying.
  7. Aziraphale, as always, takes much longer to figure things out.



At the end of the world, things turn out more or less the same. Adam Young still has a demon and an angel holding his hand, and when the world begins again he only has one father. 

I’ve been running these experiments since the beginning of time, but it’s still satisfying when a hypothesis turns out to be correct.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are <3.


End file.
